Thunderclouds having sex with the sun

[dreamer_easy]

The Lingua Franca podcast about the English-Djambarrpuyŋu Anatomy Dictionary is full of fascinating things of which this is only one: "Wäyuk is actually the word for 'upper arm', but during ceremonies, particularly about specific laws, the men will wear an arm band on their upper arm, and coming from that arm band are feathered strings and each one of those strings represents a law that is under consideration during that ceremony. And so those strings are also called wäyuk, and so that's what she was saying, it's like that, and so DNA is called djinaga'puy wäyuk which means 'a law for the inside of us'."

Via bodlon, The New Atheists' Narrow Worldview. I was gonna pull a quote from this, but there's too many interesting bits. I particularly appreciated the article as I'm halfway through Iain M. Banks' Surface Detail. If ever there was a book which just didn't need to throw in a little authorial lecture about how Religion Is Bad And Stupid and Will Inevitably Be Overthrown by Reason, this is that book! Although the marvellous description of Von Neumann machines as "the seemingly wizard wheeze of turning the rest of the universe into teeny little copies of yourself" makes up for a lot.

Moreover: GIP.

Comments

[jblum.livejournal.com]

*ignores all post content to grin at the icon*

A bad habit...

[george potter (from livejournal.com)]

...that Banks indulges in far too often for my taste. What really annoys me is that he tends to intertwine them in segments of writing that you actually want to read, making skipping them problematic. I'm agnostic, don't really care if he thinks religion is bad, but I've sort of heard this speech before, Mr. Banks, can we get back to the sentient habitats and whimsically named star-ships please? It's not as teeth-grindingly irksome as Orson Scott Card's mandatory 'Why Mormons Are The Kewlest' lectures, granted, but If I want a speech, I'll....no. I never want a speech. Just never.

How is Surface Detail, by the way?